Trapped
by keilahkillah
Summary: My spin on 3x04. Derek has already kicked Isaac out of the loft and now he has to awkwardly spend lunch time detention with none other than Cora Hale. A/N: It's kind of slow in the beginning but I think it gets better towards the end. I recently went to Chicago myself and thought the city was amazing. The Lake Tahoe is a Full House reference. Enjoy!


"And you two will be restocking the janitor's closet." Mr. Harris stated, finishing the last of his lunch time detention punishments.

Isaac turned his head and his eyes widened when he saw Cora sitting behind him. She had barely noticed him either, her pen fumbling out of her hands when they made eye contact.

"Oh, um, Mr. Harris? Does it have to be with her?" Isaac asked, grabbing their teacher's attention before he was out the door. This made Cora's heart sink and she averted her eyes pack to the various doodles in the notebook that sat in front of her. She knew Isaac was still upset about being kick out of Derek's loft but that was no reason to take it out on her. He didn't even know the whole story. _Stupid Isaac_.

"Well now that I know you would prefer not to, yes, you have to be with her." Mr. Harris said smugly.

"Great." Isaac grumbled as he grabbed the cart of supplies and quietly pushed it out the door and down the hall. Cora followed him wordlessly, while keeping a sizeable distance between the two of them. She had only been at Beacon Hills High for a few weeks, and much to her dismay, she needed Isaac to lead the way to the janitor's closet. She silently wished this would be over soon.

He opened the door and allowed Cora to enter before pushed the cart, which took up the majority of the free space in the small closet.

"Are you okay?" Cora asked quietly, a few moments after they started restocking the shelves. She had noticed how his heart rate had picked up speed slightly.

"Yeah. I'm just… not a big fan of small spaces." He ran his fingers through his hair to stay calm before placing more detergent bottles on the shelf in front of him.

"Claustrophobia?" Cora continued to inquire. When she didn't receive a response, she sighed. "I used to have it bad right after the fire. I'd feel trapped and it would feel like I was burning. It was terrible but it doesn't really happen anymore, which makes me really happy."

"What did you do? I mean.. Like.. How did you get it to stop?" Isaac asked, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

Cora shrugged "I would just close my eyes and imagine I was somewhere else. Sometimes it was just something random like an open field or whatever. Most of the time it was Chicago, though, because it's my favorite place in the world." Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered why she was telling him all this.

"Chicago?" He had stopped everything he was doing and turned to look at her. His eyebrows were furrowed in confusion.

"Yeah. It's where my parents met, got engaged, and got married. We went there once for a vacation and fell in love with the city. It was the summer before…." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, trying to get the image of her burning childhood home out of her head. "I have a lot of good memories of that summer."

"Derek never told me that. Then again, Derek never tells me anything." His voice dripped with bitterness. His tone caused a signature Hale family eye-roll to be thrown in his direction. She knew the real cause of that tone and she wasn't about to him get away with it.

"He's trying to protect you, you know." She snapped back at him.

A scoff escaped his lips. "How is kicking me out when I have nowhere else to go supposed to…"

Isaac's rant was cut off by a loud slam. The door to the storage closet was now closed, and Cora could instantly smell the panic rolling off of Isaac.

"Oh no. Okay. Isaac. Just stay calm, okay? Maybe the wind made it shut or something." It took only her half second to realize how stupid that excuse sounded.

Isaac's heart beat was racing as he inched towards the door and violently turned the handle in an attempt to get it open. "No, no, no, no." He slammed his entire body against the door. "No, something is blocking it." He pounded on the door with his fists. "Come on, come on. Please. No, no, no." He said over and over again. Helplessness took over Cora's body as she watched Isaac gripped the door frame, his audible breaths coming out quick and uneven. Instinct was kicking in and Isaac felt his wolf was trying to take control. Cora knew this and she knew she had to do something before he hurt her, or worse himself.

"Isaac.." she cautiously ducked under his long arms and stood before him, creating a barrier between him and the door. His body was hunched over and for once, Cora and he were almost the same height. She cradled his face in her hands and spoke gently to him. "Isaac. Just listen to the sound of my voice, okay?" She saw his panicked eyes flash from blue to gold back to blue, his wolf threatening to come out. She quickly recalled their previous conversation. "Just close your eyes and think about something else." He nodded and obediently closed his eyes, his head remaining limp in her small hands. However, he couldn't get the image of the closet, or the freezer out of his head. This was apparent because his breathing was still heavy and uneven. "Tell me about your favorite place. Imagine we're there and not here, okay? We're in your favorite place in the entire world." She gently rubbed her thumb over his cheek, attempting to sooth his panic. "Tell me where we are, Isaac." She could hear the faint sounds of his claws scratching into the door frame.

"We're… we're.. there's um.. my family owns this house.. um… near Lake Tahoe." He managed to get out, focusing on the image of his childhood. "We got it when I was five and my brother, Camden, was thirteen. We would go there a lot. " His breathing returned to normal as image of open fields and calm water flashes through his mind. He imagined he was there again with his parents and his brother.

"Tell me about it?" Cora stated as more of a question, afraid she might be overstepping her boundaries. She knew how uneasy she was when it came to talking about her family and she didn't want to make Isaac feel uncomfortable when he was just starting to come down from his panic attack.

"We would go there every year when school let out. We'd have bon fires and cook outs almost every night. Camden would sneak me extras s'mores after our mom said I had eaten enough for one night. Camden taught me how to swim in the lake when I was seven. My dad taught me how to fly a kite. My dad.. He.. He…" the most recent memories of his father hitting him came back. Memories of the freezer, of the storage closet, and he quickly realized that he wasn't back at the lake house. Isaac shook his head "No, no, no." Cora winced, realizing what was happening. She had to think of something quick.

"Tell me about your mom, Isaac." She held his face close to hers, as if by sheer will power she could make him feel better.

Isaac steadied his breathing once more and concentrated on the one clear memory he had of his mother's face. "Her name was Emily. She was short but she was stubborn and always seemed to hold her ground. She would sometimes take me and Cam to the library, where she worked. She was nice to everyone and had a smile that was contagious and made her blue eyes shine."

"Just like you." Cora smiled at the thought of Isaac being happy. She had only seen it once but it had made her heart flutter.

Isaac raised his head to look into her brown eyes. "Yeah…. But she's gone, and so is Camden and my dad and everyone I love just disappears and I don't have anyone.. and.. and." His sighed, face falling once more in defeat and he fought back the tears that stung his eyes. Cora kept a firm grip on his face, and her heart broke for him. He looked so beaten down and while she may have stopped the panic attack, she had caused him to have an emotional breakdown. She swore under her breath, why was she so bad at this?

Cora decided in that moment that she would do everything in her power to make sure he never felt like this ever again. "No. Isaac, that's not true." She placed a finger under his chin and forced his puffy eyes to lock back onto hers. "You have me. You'll always have me. I promise." Then she did the one thing she has wanted to do for the past month.

She leaned in and gently brushed her lips against his. Nothing more than a light touch, afraid she would scare him or trigger another bad memory. Isaac's body was stiff, hesitant, and Cora felt slightly crushed, realizing she felt more for him than he felt for her. But as she began to pull away, he followed suit, in a desperate attempt to keep their lips connected.

His lips were chapped and rougher than she had imagined. But they were his, and they were perfect. She relished in the feeling of his lips moving against hers as his arms snaked around her body, pulling her as close to him as possible. Her hands dove into his hair, the messy curls that she loved so much.

"Took you long enough." Isaac teased, before attaching his lips to hers once more. Cora smiled into the kissed as she placed a hand on his chest. She playfully pushed back into one of the shelves, causing paper towels to fall around them. He laughed against her lips, and was about to make a snarky remark about their clumsiness. However, Cora used this opportunity to slide her tongue into his mouth, causing a groan to escape instead.

They were so wrapped up in each other that they had forgotten they were trapped in the storage closet. It wasn't until the door swung open that they frantically pulled apart, hoping not to get caught by Mr. Harris.

"Oh. Uh. Sorry. There was a vending machine in front of the door and I was just making sure you guys were okay." It was Scott, but he had definitely seen what they had been up to.

Isaac rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh. Yeah. We're good. Thanks."

Cora glanced at Scott. "We'd better get to English." She nodded quickly and followed him around the corner, towards Ms. Blake's class. She glanced behind her just in time to see Isaac mouth a 'thank you' in her direction. She smiled at him before entering the class room.

The alpha twins smirked at her as she sat down. "How was lunch time detention with the ticking time bomb?" Cora knew then it was the twins who had locked her and Isaac in the closet.

She turned and smiled deviously at them. "It was great actually. I kind of want to thank you for what you did." And it took everything in her to not burst out laughing at their reactions.


End file.
